The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne (beach read .txt) 📗

“I am a good swimmer, sir.”

“I repeat to you that you are risking your life,” resumed the engineer.

“No matter,” answered Ayrton⁠—“Mr. Smith, I ask it as a favor. It may raise me in my own estimation.”

“Go, Ayrton,” said the engineer, who knew how deeply a refusal would affect the ex-convict, now become an honest man.

“I will go with you,” said Pencroff.

“You distrust me!” said Ayrton, quickly. Then, he added, more humbly, “and it is just.”

“No, no!” cried Smith, eagerly, “Pencroff has no such feeling. You have misunderstood him.”

“Just so,” answered the sailor; “I am proposing to Ayrton to accompany him only as far as the islet. One of these rascals may possibly have gone on shore there, and if so, it will take two men to prevent him from giving the alarm. I will wait for Ayrton on the islet.”

Everything thus arranged, Ayrton got ready for departure. His project was bold but not impracticable, thanks to the dark night. Once having reached the ship, Ayrton, by clinging to the chains of the shrouds, might ascertain the number and perhaps the designs of the convicts. They walked down upon the beach. Ayrton stripped himself and rubbed himself with grease, the better to endure the chill of the water; for he might have to be in it several hours. Meanwhile Pencroff and Neb had gone after the canoe, fastened on the bank of the Mercy some hundreds of paces further up. When they came back, Ayrton was ready to start.

They threw a wrap over his shoulders, and shook hands with him all round. Then he got into the boat with Pencroff, and pushed off into the darkness. It was now half-past ten, and their companions went back to wait for them at the Chimneys.

The channel was crossed without difficulty, and the canoe reached the opposite bank of the islet. They moved cautiously, lest pirates should have landed there. But the island was deserted. The two walked rapidly over it, frightening the birds from their nests in the rocks. Having reached the further side, Ayrton cast himself unhesitatingly into the sea, and swam noiselessly towards the ship’s lights, which now were streaming across the water. Pencroff hid himself among the rocks, to await his companion’s return.

Meanwhile, Ayrton swam strongly towards the ship, slipping through the water. His head only appeared above the surface; his eyes were fixed on the dark hull of the brig, whose lights were reflected in the water. He thought only of his errand, and nothing of the danger he encountered, not only from the pirates but from the sharks which infested these waters. The current was in his favor, and the shore was soon far behind.

Half an hour afterwards, Ayrton, without having been perceived by anyone, dived under the ship, and clung with one hand to the bowsprit. Then he drew breath, and, raising himself by the chains, climbed to the end of the cut-water. There some sailors’ clothes hung drying. He found an easy position, and listened.

They were not asleep on board of the brig. They were talking, singing, and laughing. These words, intermingled with oaths, came to Ayrton’s ears:⁠—

“What a famous find our brig was!”

“The Speedy is a fast sailor. She deserves her name.”

“All the Norfolk shipping may do their best to take her.”

“Hurrah for her commander. Hurrah for Bob Harvey!”

Our readers will understand what emotion was excited in Ayrton by this name, when they learn that Bob Harvey was one of his old companions in Australia, who had followed out his criminal projects by getting possession, off Norfolk Island, of this brig, charged with arms, ammunition, utensils, and tools of all kinds, destined for one of the Sandwich Islands. All his band had gotten on board, and, adding piracy to their other crimes, the wretches scoured the Pacific, destroying ships and massacring their crews. They were drinking deep and talking loudly over their exploits, and Ayrton gathered the following facts:⁠—

The crew were composed entirely of English convicts, escaped from Norfolk Island. In 29° 2′ south latitude, and 165° 42′ east longitude, to the east of Australia, is a little island about six leagues in circumference, with Mount Pitt rising in the midst, 1,100 feet above the level of the sea. It is Norfolk Island, the seat of an establishment where are crowded together the most dangerous of the transported English convicts. There are 500 of them; they undergo a rigid discipline, with severe punishment for disobedience, and are guarded by 150 soldiers and 150 civil servants, under the authority of a Governor. A worse set of villains cannot be imagined. Sometimes, though rarely, in spite of the extreme precautions of their jailors, some of them contrive to escape by seizing a ship, and become the pest of the Polynesian archipelagos. Thus had done Harvey and his companions. Thus had Ayrton formerly wished to do. Harvey had seized the Speedy, which was anchored within sight of Norfolk Island, had massacred the crew, and for a year had made the brig the terror of the Pacific.

The convicts were most of them gathered on the poop, in the after part of the ship; but a few were lying on deck, talking in loud voices. The conversation went on amid noise and drunkenness. Ayrton gathered that chance only had brought them within sight of Lincoln Island. Harvey had never set foot there; but, as Smith had foreseen, coming upon an island not in the maps, he had determined to go on shore, and, if the land suited him, to make it the Speedy’s headquarters. The black flag and the cannon-shot were a mere freak of the pirates, to imitate a ship-of-war running up her colors.

The colonists were in very serious danger. The island, with its easy water supply, its little harbor, its varied resources so well turned to account by the colonists, its secret recesses of Granite House⁠—all these would be just what the convicts wanted. In their hands the island would become an